


Inevitable

by etoiledunord



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-13
Updated: 2009-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etoiledunord/pseuds/etoiledunord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the future, Sylar and Bennet work together to stop Hiro—but why does he need stopping?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> Written for winter 2008 heroes_exchane on Livejournal. Recipient is soda_and_capes, who asked for an "AU with evil Hiro being a badass businessman," as well as the inclusion of Sylar and Bennet working together. Thanks to motsureru for the beta read!

Another security guard fell to the floor with nothing but a soft thud, dead from a broken neck at Sylar’s telekinetic hand. Bennet stepped over the body first as he continued to slink down the hallway, gun at the ready. It was May 23rd, 2019, and they weren’t taking any chances.

They approached the double doors at the end of the hall carefully, positioning themselves one on either side. Bennet watched Sylar as he concentrated, listening for activity inside the room. There was only one heartbeat, slow and steady.

“On my count,” Sylar whispered. “Three, two, one-“

~~~

What was it about waffles that made them so irresistible? Was it their golden crunchy outside? Their soft and fluffy inside? Their pockets, in which you could hide little treasures of butter and syrup? Or was it the way that, no matter what else was going on, waffles could always be counted on to cheer up Hiro Nakamura?

The morning after his mother’s death, Kimiko had come into Hiro’s bedroom and woken him up with a plate of toaster waffles. As she climbed onto the bed and sat next to him, she’d said it was her duty as an older sister to make sure that Hiro ate, but she then proceeded to steal one of the waffles for herself. They’d eaten them plain, tearing little pieces off with their hands and eating slowly, reminiscing, both with laughter and tears, about the bittersweet lives they’d had until the day before.

On the day that Charlie died, Hiro was stuck in the Seattle airport, his layover to Las Vegas having been delayed by ten hours due to mechanical issues. Feeling like a powerless failure, he’d stopped into a restaurant and ordered a plate of miniature Belgian waffles. He counted down the minutes to Charlie’s death, wishing that something would be different this time, that the version of himself currently with her at the Burnt Toast Diner would do something to save her. But the time came and went, and everything stayed the same. Then his waffles arrived, and his eyes went wide. They were shaped like hearts. “Heart disease awareness month,” the waitress had told him, “most ironic part of my day,” and Hiro thanked fate for giving he and Charlie what they’d had, even if it had to be taken away. _I love you, too._

Hiro’s first day as CEO of Yamagato Industries included an offer from Ando to take him out for lunch—celebratory waffles, of course. Despite his friend’s kind intentions, when Ando had asked him how it felt to be rich and powerful, Hiro couldn’t help but feel guilty. He may have saved the world from the virus, but he was the one who’d doomed it in the first place. He’d created the monster who had killed his father, and he was powerful now because his father was dead. “Still,” Ando said, “fathers die, and there will always be bad men. I just want to see my friend be happy and successful, so eat your waffles.” Hiro complied, glad that his friend was giving him permission to be happy, despite the rest of the world.

~~~

The doors burst inward with a bang and a shower of splinters. “Don’t move!” yelled Bennet. But it wasn’t necessary.

Hiro Nakamura stood at the back of the room, looking out the window. He was being quite still. Sylar thought for a second that something was wrong, that this was a set-up, but then the man spoke.

“Hello, Bennet, Sylar. You’ve come to kill me, yes?”

~~~

He’d tried seventeen different ways to save Ando’s life. None of them worked. Every time he solved one problem, another presented itself. There were too many variables. Some things that he tried didn’t change enough. Some changed the wrong things. It seemed that, no matter what, Ando Masahashi was destined to be shot to death on August 13th, 2010. Hiro had finally given up trying to stop it when he himself had wound up accidentally being the one to pull the trigger. He couldn’t save his best friend’s life, so he decided to let the record show that the death had been his fault.

It had been ruled accidental, of course—a misfire during a hostage situation. Sympathy flooded in from everyone Hiro knew. Even Kimiko cried at the funeral. “I know, little brother, that you feel like you’ve failed your friend,” she’d told him, “but I’m certain that he does not resent you for what happened. If his life had to end, then it was best that it end mercifully at the hand of a friend, rather than brutally at the hand of the enemy who threatened you that day.”

Hiro had considered her carefully before speaking. “Loves die, fathers die, friends die... This time, I actually pulled the trigger. Will I ever be guilty?”

“You’re not guilty of the inevitable,” she replied.

Hiro didn’t want waffles that day. To him, they had now become symbols of broody, naive little boys who believed in hope, who believed that they could do good, and who still sought forgiveness for the things they’d done wrong, as if such forgiveness existed.

~~~

“You can’t freeze time or teleport, Hiro,” Sylar told him.

“I know,” he replied. “You have the Haitian’s power, now.”

There was a slight paused before Bennet spoke. “You need to be stopped, Hiro.”

“I do,” he agreed as he turned around. “You have no idea the work I put into making sure you two came to stop me.”

~~~

During the years after Ando’s death, Hiro’s doubt and confusion grew. His ability made him seem nearly omnipotent, but he was starting to realize that the only things he could do were things that were meant to happen. He was not a master of time and space; he was a tool of fate. And fate was ruthless. Though he was not directly involved in every bad thing that happened, there were several events for which he still felt a heartbreaking amount of guilt:

February 13, 2011 - The economic collapse that almost nobody knew could be traced back to an exchange between a CEO and a financial analyst on the floor of the Tokyo stock market.

November 3, 2014 - The murder of a British intelligence agent to prevent the spreading of aviation technology developed by Yamagato Industries, which allowed the fledgling Japanese army to win the Grain Wars in 2016.

December 20, 2016 - The signing of the Eastern Co-operation Act, which allowed Japan trading advantages with British Commonwealth countries in exchange for the cessation of Japan’s offensive attacks.

May 10, 2019 - The pile of 43 corpses in Kirby Plaza, New York City, men and women from all over the world, all with the tops of their heads missing and their brains removed—with the exception of one dark-skinned man on top of the heap, whose brain was left exposed in invitation.

September 30, 2022 - The diagnosis of the first patient infected with a highly contagious deadly pathogen with an incubation period of one month, which wound up killing 48% of the population of Australia and New Zealand and an estimated 20% of the rest of the world’s population—a pathogen that would later be found during a geothermal drilling operation in the Canadian arctic in 2034, by which time a vaccine and treatment had been developed.

~~~

The men by the broken door hesitated, uncertain.

“Hiro...” Sylar started. Hiro looked at him. “You’ve done too much damage to the world. You’ve been in the shadows of events with global consequences, and the people whose lives you’ve made difficult and miserable don’t even know it’s your fault.”

“It wasn’t my intention,” he replied sadly. “It was inevitable.”

Bennet cleared his throat. “You have a choice,” he said. “You can come with us quietly, or we can deal with this here.”

Hiro ignored him for the moment. “Everything that’s happened has been inevitable,” he mused. “If it wasn’t, I’d have changed it.” He turned to look Bennet in the eye, now. “I’ve never actually died before, you know. You’re here now because I’ve been trying to change that.”


End file.
